When the soft and tender kiss, which didn’t match his rough temperament, continued once more, I trembled with my eyes closed and unknowingly made sounds like “Hng, ngh, ah…!”
“Looks like that bastard David really sucked at it.”
Was it because the heat had risen to my face? My mind was dazed. With half-opened eyes, I looked at Joel’s face, which had slightly pulled away. His face, blurry at first but gradually coming into focus, had one corner of his lips twisted up.
“I’m way better at it, aren’t I?”
“……”
Joel wiped my saliva-soaked lips gently with his thumb while spouting off. So… the reason he kissed me was just…….
“To, compare with David?”
“I’m way better at it. Right? That bastard’s young so he doesn’t have much experience.”
Joel laughed triumphantly. Sixteen or eighteen, what’s the difference! I moved the hand I had around him and pushed Joel’s shoulder hard.
“That’s your reason for kissing me?”
My face, which must have turned bright red, felt embarrassing and shameful. I pressed my lips with the back of my hand and hung my head. Whether it was this guy or that guy, they were all just messing with me. I really shouldn’t treat these guys like people—they’re just characters in a drama, but I keep getting confused.
Whether it was Dave or Joel, I just needed to use them to raise my stats. Right, with that kiss earlier, the Rotten Pineapple score went up by a whole 4%. This was enough. This was…….
But as Dad once said, I guess I can’t be a cold and rational person. When Dave did it, and now when Joel was doing this, it hurt. My stomach churned, and nausea rose up. At the same time, it stung as if someone had squeezed my heart tightly and let go.
I didn’t like those two people. But that didn’t mean I wanted to be mocked with the identity I had agonized over intensely, denied, and barely acknowledged.
“……You and David are no different.”
I roughly pushed Joel away again and stood up. I grabbed my bag and tried to go outside the trailer. But frustratingly, click-clack! Click-clack! Only those sounds came out, but the door wouldn’t open. My eyelids were gradually heating up—this was bad. I didn’t want to cry. At least not in front of Joel Gomez.
“It’s the other way.”
Click, a large, dark hand covered mine gripping the doorknob. Then it turned the handle I had been turning with all my might in the opposite direction. Irritation surged up.
“Let go.”
“Why are you suddenly acting like this? Do you have some illness? Why are you acting like someone whose hormones are all over the place?”
“I said let go…!”
“Hmm, I don’t want to.”
I roughly shook off Joel’s hand. But far from letting go, Joel grabbed my hand even tighter and pulled me.
“What? You and David are no different?”
Joel, who had pulled me into something like a back hug from behind, let out a “pfft,” scoffing as he whispered in my ear. His breath tickled my ear, so I scratched at it irritably.
“Stay a bit longer. I’ll give you food.”
“I don’t want to…!”
“Then why did you come in the first place? I thought you came to have sex. But it doesn’t seem like that’s it, so why are you making such a fuss over one kiss?”
“I, I…! I hate that kind of thing!”
What, sex? I got even angrier. I’m an idiot for caring about a bastard like this! My insides were boiling.
“What do you hate?”
“You and David…! The fact that I, that I… hate being teased because you know I like men!”
After spitting out those words, my emotions surged even more! Tears threatened to come. I hoped he didn’t notice my voice trembling at the end.
“Is kissing you a bit considered teasing? If I want to do it, I can do it.”
“If I weren’t gay, you wouldn’t have done it!”
“That’s not true.”
“What?”
“Even if you were 100% hetero, on the football team, and built like King Kong, if I wanted to do it, I’d do it. Well, then I probably wouldn’t want to though.”
“……”
“And I had to disinfect it too. Since that bastard David rubbed all over it disgustingly. You’re supposed to put saliva on wounds, you know. Be grateful—I even disinfected it directly with my tongue. But this is my first time rubbing lips or tongues with a guy? Hey, seventh. Why don’t you straighten that face and be happy? You took my ‘first kiss with a man.’ Go raise a toast or something.”
Joel pulled my body toward him and took something out of the nearby refrigerator, pressing it into my hand.
‘Kombucha’
“The, the lesbian living next door gave it to me. Said it’s trendy these days.”
Joel shrugged his shoulders, then pop! opened my bottle with the magnetic bottle opener attached to the refrigerator.
“Come on, a toast. You, idiot, celebrate being ‘the man who rubbed lips and tongues with me, Joel Gomez, for the first time,’ and I’ll celebrate ‘rubbing lips and tongues with a guy for the first time.'”
Clink! Joel arbitrarily clinked the neck of the bottle I was holding with the one he was holding in a toast, then started gulping it down.
“……What even.”
“I never thought there’d be something I was doing for the first time in my life. Seventh, you can’t even fathom what an infinite honor this is.”
I wasn’t even angry anymore. I felt like I’d gotten caught up in something? But I didn’t know exactly what. I was just exhausted, so I slumped down in a chair and gulped down the kombucha while hugging my bag. But ugh! This has carbonation? I didn’t know. And…….
“Sour!”
“You didn’t know lemons are sour?”
“……Right. It’s lemon.”
There was a lemon drawn large on the outside of the bottle. Still, once I got used to that sour taste, it wasn’t as bad as I thought, so I took another sip and looked around the trailer. Come to think of it, there was something I hadn’t seen earlier.
“You like movies?”
“……I do.”
The walls were covered with movie posters. There was even the movie ‘Groundhog Day’ that I’d seen at the theater the other time.
“You fell asleep watching that last time.”
“If you watch anything more than thirty times, you fall asleep.”
Joel sat on a nearby dresser and raised one eyebrow.
“Thirty times……”
Must be a movie he really likes. It was a sweet romantic comedy though—it really didn’t suit him. Was it because of the kombucha, or because Joel had watched a movie that didn’t suit him more than thirty times—for some reason, I started giggling.
“Why are you cracking up?”
“I must be drunk.”
“It’s probably non-alcoholic.”
“Then I must be drunk on carbonation. The carbon dioxide is attacking my brain like crazy.”
I gulped down the kombucha as if it were beer, then thwack! slammed the empty bottle roughly on the table.
“Don’t ever kiss me or do anything like that again. Don’t tease me with stuff like asking if I want to sleep with you either. Calling me stupid is fine… no, that’s annoying too, but don’t mock me for being gay. It really… upsets me. Yeah, upsets me. I agonized over it really hard and denied it before finally acknowledging it……”
“Man, the life of an angst-ridden teenage gay sure is exhausting.”
I glared at Joel, who was clicking his tongue. Joel, who took a sip of kombucha just like it was beer, swirled the bottle around.
“Hey, seventh. Think about it. It’s because you’re a suuuuper sensitive teenage gay with thin nerves, but I act that way with everyone anyway, you know? I’m not treating you specially, and I have no intention of treating you specially in the future either.”
“……What are you trying to say?”
“I’m going to live however I want, so just go eat shit. If you expect me to care about your sensitive feelings, don’t ever come near my place again. I won’t do that for anyone.”
“Ha, you spout that kind of crap and say your personality isn’t shit?”
So basically, whether I’m upset or not in the future, I should deal with those emotions on my own, right? I let out an incredulous breath.
“Yeah. My personality is shit, I admit it. But I can’t stand being told I’m worse than that bastard David. That bastard is the worst of the worst.”
“……He is pretty awful.”
A guy who’s only sixteen, messing with his hyung, and also toying with an innocent girl. He was bad.
“Right. Joel, whatever crap you spout, I’ll let it all go in one ear and out the other. It’s all woof woof, dog shit anyway.”
There’s no need to be hurt by the words and actions of beings that aren’t human, right? Thinking that way made me feel better. Even that kiss from earlier felt like it was nothing. It’s no different from a dog licking your face, after all.
“Now you’re treating me like a dog?”
“Woof woof.”
Toward Joel, whose face was scrunched up, I mimicked a dog sound by opening and closing my thumb and other fingers together like playing with a sock puppet. Joel’s eyebrows shot up.
“Now I must seem easy to you?”
“Not easy, just not human-like.”
“This tiny little idiot is really getting on my last nerve, huh?”
“You’re not Everest, so what would I get for climbing you? Does someone give out a prize or something?”
Hmph, I picked up the bottle again and tilted the neck toward my mouth, then tapped the bottom of the bottle. Drip, drop. The lemon-flavored kombucha fell very slowly, one drop at a time. It wasn’t even enough to wet my throat. Clink! I took the new bottle Joel was holding out, clinking the bottom part, and drank the kombucha that was so full it sloshed.
“……It tastes good once you get used to it.”
“Then just finish it all and go. I’m dying trying to force myself to drink this tasteless crap.”
“Does this have caffeine?”
After drinking the second bottle, my heart went thump, thump, thump! beating fast.
“How am I supposed to know that?”
“……It does.”
I found it written small in the corner of the bottle. I’m not particularly sensitive to caffeine, but maybe because it had carbonation, or because of the amount. Thump, thump, thump! My heartbeat quickened. I felt anxious, but also excited. Maybe that’s why I became braver than usual.
“……Are you really a drug dealer? But no matter how much I think about it, you don’t look like someone who’d do that kind of thing. ……Well, your personality is super shitty though.”
NEW!
‘Joel Gomez’s’ affection has increased by 1!
